The Midget in the Basement

 Written in June, 2002

In the Secret Victorian house south of town, 13 year old Randy sat on a bar stool in the kitchen, swiveling back and forth, drinking peach wine and giggling as he watched his friend Ben, standing nearby, as he used an eggbeater.

     Excuse me!? What the hell!? Well, allow me to explain.  The boys were attempting to make dinner, and to this end they had gone through a cookbook, selecting a recipe entitled ‘Mexican Egg Bake’.  Benny was trying to beat eggs. He, Randy, and the 4 other guys in the house were all a little drunk, having been capering around drinking alcohol for the past hour. They planned to get more drunk later, but first they wanted to eat dinner.  Matt, an evil yet friendly 14 year old, was sitting cross-legged on the tiled floor, holding the cookbook and reading directions from the recipe.

      “It says ‘after beating the eggs, stir in the seasonings.’’ Matt read aloud.

     “Oh, yeah! Cool!” Andrew said.  He came trotting over with a small bowl containing chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, paprika, and several other things, and waited for Ben to finish beating the eggs.

     “Are you done beating yet?” Andrew asked.

     “No.” Ben said, then laughed.  12 year old Shawn, with his shaggy sheep-dog hair and big bare feet,  came out of the pantry with a big molasses cookie and began eating it, washing it down with beer.

     “I like beer.” He said to nobody in particular.

     Suddenly, purple mist began coming out of the air conditioning vents in the ceiling!  “Hey, what the hell is that!?” Ben demanded. Randy looked, then shouted “Somebody must be sabotaging the air conditioner!!”

     Snatching a variety of knives, the 6 boys hurried down to the basement, where the air conditioning equipment was located.  They trotted down the carpeted hallway, past various store rooms, finally coming to the air conditioner room.

     Andrew opened the door, and they discovered the source of the purple mist—a tiny man, around 24 inches tall, was sitting on a miniature folding chair next to the air conditioner, cackling madly and pouring some kind of powder into it. They didn’t need the knives after all.

     Matt said nothing, but hurried over to the man and kicked him. His socked foot thudded against the freak’s back, knocking him and his chair to the floor.  The man screamed.  Matt shoved his foot down on the weirdo’s back, pressing him hard against the floor to prevent him from escaping. His foot covered the man’s back from the base of his spine to the middle of the back of his head… Randy meanwhile snatched up the box of purple powder and examined it in trepidation, fearing that it was poison or something.  The box however proved to be something harmless, yet idiotic. Randy read the front of the box. “Acme Purple Mist—pour it in an air conditioner and laugh as purple mist comes out of it! A great joke! Biodegradable and harmless!”

     Randy made a face at the box, then turned his attention to the midget.

     “What were you doing, you idiot!?” he demanded. “Where did you come from!? Who are you!”

     The man said nothing.  He simply waved his arms around and kicked his legs.  Matthew was applying plenty of pressure to his back, stepping on him hard. He couldn’t breathe, and he was getting a nasty rug burn on his face.

     “Matt, let him talk. I wanna hear what he has to say.” Randy said.

     “Are you sure?” Matthew smiled at his friend. “We should just crush him. He’ll probably just scream that he’s a midget, a MIDGET!”

     Benny laughed.  He’d heard that line many times. The town had many midgets, and they all seemed to scream the same idiotic thing when threatened.  But Matt took his foot off the midget, who drew in a breath, then screamed “You stupid persons!! How dare you attack me! Get out of this house! It’s mine! MINE!!”

     “It is not. It’s ours. We built it! How stupid are you!?” Randy sneered at the weirdo, who responded by sputtering and fuming, then shrieked “I am a midget…a MIDGET!!”

     “See? I told you he’d say that.” Matt laughed.

     “Do you know what we’re gonna do to you?” Ben asked the little man, stepping closer to him.

     “No! Please! I am a Midget!” the midget screamed, rolling over onto his back and trying to get up, but Ben and Matt and Randy quickly put their feet on him and pushed him back down, first flattening him against the floor, then pressing on him until he was dead. He gurgled and moaned, then began to scream, and died shortly thereafter.  The boys smiled with pleasure, leaning up against each other as, under their weight, the midget expired, his final gurgling chuckle of death almost inaudible because Randy was stepping on his face, feeling the hot, apple-sized head under the ball of his foot trying to turn away, but unable… feeling the gentle, desperate suction of the tiny man’s attempts at breathing through his soft, warm foot.

     “Yeah, he’s smothering! He can’t breathe!! This is so awesome!” Randy said with quiet yet intense pleasure.

     “Die you little weirdo. Die!” Andrew giggled from nearby. Ben and Matt happily compressed the little moron’s body, and his ribs broke. His mind was lost in an explosion of red and black, the stars and darkness of death. And away he went.

     And then the midget was dead, pressed and smothered under feet  almost half the size of his whole body from head to toe.  He was like a doll to the boys. A dead doll.

     “That was freakish!” Landon blurted. Andrew opened a hatch in the floor and they threw the corpse into a bottomless pit, then shut the hatch.  Randy, Ben and Matt were looking at the bottoms of their feet to see if the little man had leaked any blood onto their socks. They saw none, so it was okay. They did high fives.

     “That’s why I like bigger-sized midgets.” Randy observed. “It’s easier to just press ‘em to death without them splitting open.”

     “Oh, gross!” Ben laughed at the comment. Then they went upstairs.  The purple mist had dissipated. They went back to their cooking.

      While definitely odd, the events in the basement were the type of oddity that nevertheless seemed to occur daily in their house. It was annoying sometimes, but also so much fun to find the little freaks and choke them to death with one thumb, or step on their face and smother them to death under bare feet, or push down on their chests so he couldn’t breathe, or all sorts of similar nice things.

     “Ha ha.” Randy laughed, pouring more peach wine into his glass. “I’m evil!”

     “Like, so what.” Matt said, “I am too.”

     “Me too.  I’m a evil peach too.” Ben said, still beating eggs. “I strangled a little kid today, remember? Isn’t that evil?”

    “Oh, maybe.” Randy smiled. Then he fell off the bar stool onto the floor, laughing.

                      --- the end ---